Classic Poem

Oh , I once was a lad
Of a single thought.
Melody-mad,
With ears for nought
But the miracles Bach and Beethoven wrought,
When suddenly you,
Out of the blue,
With your formal old master Galuppi, dropped,
And grim-eyed Hugues
Of the mountainous fugues,
And the rampired walls of the marvellous Abt,—
To build me, from Music's far-off strand,
A way to a humaner, dearer shore,—
A bridge to poetry-land.

Then to my soul I swore:
“If poets may win such store
Of music's own highland air,
Yet abide in the common round,
Transmuting man's dusty ground
To gems for the world to wear,—
Theirs too is a priceless art,—
Is a thing that I fain would share,—
A thing that is near to my heart!”

Thus were a young soul's ears unstopped
By Galuppi and Hugues and the marvellous Abt,
Who bridged a way for ignorant feet
And parted wide for wondering eyes
The port of a second paradise;
Showing how right it is, and meet
That a Schubert's voice may never repeat,
With the self-same thought and the self-same beat,
Measures a Milton's lips have dropped;—
That music waxes where poesy wanes,
And, with thirsty lips to poesy's veins,
Grows by her want, by her wasting, gains.

For music, the protean, is this, and this:
The rainbow shimmer of love's first bliss,
A despairing gesture, a dream-like whim,
The down on the plumes of the Cherubim,
The body of Ariel, lissom and fresh,—
Too subtle for poesy's golden mesh,—
An exquisite, evanescent shape
That “breaks through language” to escape
To the bourne of that country, brighter, vaster,
Where now you are singing, dear Music Master.